March 3 Faith Formation

March 3, 2014 St Francis Faith Formation/Prayer Group     

Topic:  CONGREGATION

 
V:  O God, come to my assistance.
R:  Lord, make haste to help me.
V:  Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit,
R:  As it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever. Amen. Alleluia.

Prayer for God’s Blessing (Thomas Aquinas)

 579  I Heard the Voice of Jesus Say

623  Be Thou My Vision

Meditation:

I pray for the gift of gratitude for the ways God has been laboring to bring forth life in me.

Reflection Questions

Today, I pray for gratitude. At this very moment, am I grateful? If so, I give thanks and praise. If not, I speak with God about it and ask God to grant me this grace.

What, of God's many gifts to me, am I particularly grateful for today? I give thanks to God for these particular gifts.

 

The young man went away sad, having many possessions. What possessions am I clinging to? How might the grace of gratitude aid me to let these possessions go? I speak with God about this.

Continue with Sacrosanctum Concilium:

“…efforts also must be made to encourage a sense of community within the parish, above all in the common celebration of the Sunday Mass.” (42b)

Last time I left you with the questions:  Is there a difference between community and congregation (as df by Romano Guardini)? If so, what is it and is it important?  How do we encourage both a sense of community and a sense of congregation?  Can this be achieved with a Sunday-only priest? 

Selections from Meditations before Mass (Romano Guardini) Chapter 16 & 17:  The Congregation and Injustice Rectified, The Congregation and the Church.

“as a rule, congregation exists only when its members will it.”

“if there is to be a congregation, the believers must know what a congregation is; they must desire it and actively strive to attain it.”

“A congregation is the sacred coherence that links person to person as it links God to men and men to God.”

“As long as you bear your grudge…there can be no true congregation as far as you are concerned. Forgive, honestly and sincerely, and the sacred unifying circle will close again.”

“The forgiveness of Christ is different. It means that divine love gains a footing in us, crating that new order which is meant to reign among the sons and daughters of God.  Hence when you try to fulfill the law of love for the sake of God and His holy mysteries, you make it possible for God to allow the congregation of those rooted in His love to flower.”

“The true congregation is a gathering of those who belong to Christ, the holy people of God, united by faith and love.”

“When we read the prayers of the Mass with this in mind, we notice that the word I appears very seldom and never without a special reason.”

“The real antonym of community is not the individual and his individualism, but the egoist and his selfishness.  It is this that must first be overcome…But to do this we must have solitude, for only in solitude do we have a chance to see ourselves objectively and to free ourselves from our own chains.”

“together we face God; together we are congregation. Not only I and others in general, but this man, that woman over there, and the believer next to me. In God’s sight they are all as important as I am….”

“We will consciously, earnestly pray the we of the Liturgy, for from such things congregation is formed.”

“Until now we have spoken of congregation as the Christian we in its encounter with God, the community of those united by the same faith and by mutual love…The conception must include also those outside any particular building, even outside the church; for congregation reaches far beyond.”

“congregation stretches not only over the whole earth but also far beyond the borders of death.  About those gathered around the altar, the horizons of time and space roll back, revealing as the real sustaining community the whole of saved humanity.”

“Man has a tendency to spiritual intimacy and exclusiveness, which causes him to shrink from such magnitude and grandeur. There is also the resistance of modern religious feeling to the visible Church in its realistic sense: resistance to office and order, to authority and constitutionality.”